The present invention relates to vending apparatus and, more particularly, to microprocessor-based vending apparatus capable of providing a significant increase in the amount and complexity of vending operations without any increase in the size of the vending apparatus and in the total number of conventional components employed in the vending apparatus and in fact leading to a significant reduction in the total number of components employed in conventional vending apparatus.
Although it may not be obvious to the casual observer, the conentional vending machine, which is employed for vending liquids and/or packaged food products, such as candy, for example, are capable of performing some rather complex functions, such as accepting a coin; examining the accepted coin to ascertain its authenticity; recognizing the denomination of the coin and rejecting if it is insufficient for the particular purchase requested or, alternatively, returning the precise amount of change in the event that the denomination exceeds the cost of the desired purchase; and dispensing the particular item requested. In some cases, the dispensing operation may also include a properly-sequenced group of activities including dispensing precisely one fresh cup and dispensing precise amounts of both liquid and solid ingredients into said cup to provide the desired liquid beverage having quantities of ingredients to suit the taste of the user. Conventionally, these operations have been accomplished through the use of either mechanical or electromechanical devices which, although rather ingenious in their own right, are large, cumbersome, and of questionable reliability in that they are subject to a significant amount of wearing and thereby require regular maintenance and/or repairs.
In addition to all of the functions which conventional vending apparatus is capable of performing, there are nevertheless a number of other functions which it would be highly desirable and in some applications even imperative to integrate into vending apparatus to provide the vending apparatus with both useful and important operating capabilities. The utilization of conventional apparatus to introduce such capabilities renders the vending apparatus still more complex and cumbersome and in fact is highly impractical due to the limited space available within the vending apparatus housing.